Fodor's Expert Review The Egyptian Museum
This huge neoclassical building, a Downtown landmark on the north end of Tahrir Square, was masterfully designed by French architect Marcel Dourgnon. It opened in 1902, making it one of the oldest archaeological museums in the Middle East—and one of the largest, with a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts so vast that it would have taken nine months to complete a tour if you spent just one minute studying each item.
Although some of the museum's treasures have been moved to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization—and most of the Tutankhamun finds are now in Egypt's newest archaeological repository, the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza—the breadth here is still staggering. Galleries take you through millennia, from the Predynastic Period (6000 to 3100 BC) through the Greco-Roman Era (332 BC to 313 AD). The Tanis Treasure includes gold masks, jewelry, solid-silver coffins, and other artifacts dating from between 1076 and 945 BC. Don't miss the animal mummy rooms, especially... READ MORE
This huge neoclassical building, a Downtown landmark on the north end of Tahrir Square, was masterfully designed by French architect Marcel Dourgnon. It opened in 1902, making it one of the oldest archaeological museums in the Middle East—and one of the largest, with a collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts so vast that it would have taken nine months to complete a tour if you spent just one minute studying each item.
Although some of the museum's treasures have been moved to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization—and most of the Tutankhamun finds are now in Egypt's newest archaeological repository, the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza—the breadth here is still staggering. Galleries take you through millennia, from the Predynastic Period (6000 to 3100 BC) through the Greco-Roman Era (332 BC to 313 AD). The Tanis Treasure includes gold masks, jewelry, solid-silver coffins, and other artifacts dating from between 1076 and 945 BC. Don't miss the animal mummy rooms, especially if you have kids in tow, or the Fayyum portraits: done on wood, these very lifelike paintings put you face to face with one individual Roman-era Egyptian after another.
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